S tier is the best — a rank placed above A. It marks the elite, must-have, can’t-be-beaten picks. Here’s where the letter came from and how the rest of the S–D scale works.
S tier meaning: S tier is the top rank in a tier list — the single best group, placed above A. So when people ask what does S tier mean or look up the meaning of S tier, this is it: the elite slot reserved for the very best.
The S in S tier stands for Special, Superior, or Superb, so the S rank meaning is essentially “a level above A.” If you have ever wondered what does the S in S tier stand for, that is the short answer.
The S grade originated in Japan, where school and arcade grading systems used S above the usual A–F scale to mean Special, Superior, or Superb — a result so good that a normal A didn’t capture it. Fighting-game and RPG communities adopted it to mark characters that were a clear cut above the rest, and the convention spread across the internet from there.
So when you see something in S tier, it means “better than the best of the rest.” It is the rank you reserve for your absolute favorites.
People also ask where does S tier come from and why is it called S tier — it traces back to those Japanese grading charts that placed S on top of the A–F scale. So if you are wondering what does S tier stand for, it is a grade built to say “better than A.”
The exact word behind the letter is debated. It is often linked to the Japanese すごい (sugoi), meaning “amazing,” and to 秀 (shū), the mark for “excellent” or “exemplary” in Japanese schools; a few accounts trace it instead to 特等 (tokutō), or “special class.” No single version is official, which is why Special, Superior, Superb, and Sugoi all get offered as the answer.
The "S rank" was popularised worldwide by fighting games and arcade scoreboards — earning an S on a Japanese arcade cabinet meant you had beaten the game's own A-grade ceiling. Players carried the habit online, and today "S-tier" is used for everything from pizza to programming languages.
Because the scale borrowed its top grade from another system. On the American A–F report card, A was already the ceiling — an S there usually just meant “Satisfactory” on a pass/fail mark. Japanese schools instead stacked an S above A to reward work an ordinary top grade could not, which handed teachers a wider spread of results to give out.
Games ran with it. Japanese titles — from rhythm-game score grades to the combat ranks in Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Solid — award an S for play that clears the A-grade ceiling, and community tier lists for League of Legends and Super Smash Bros. picked up the same top-of-the-scale S. So S tier sits higher than A tier for a simple reason: it was built as the grade that only appears when A is not enough.
After S, tiers follow the alphabet, each one a step lower:
Most tier lists use five rows (S, A, B, C, D). You can add E and F for harsher rankings, or stop at C for shorter ones — there are no fixed rules.
Spelled out in full, the ranking is a SABCDEF tier list — S, A, B, C, D, E, F from best to worst. If you have searched what does SABCDEF mean or s a b c d e f tier list, it is simply the complete letter scale, sometimes shortened to the SABCD tier, the SABC ranking, or the S A B C D scale.
It is the same S-to-D scale shown above, just extended with the two lowest grades — E (poor, and often skipped) and F (the worst, a fail grade). Not everyone uses every letter. A short SABC tier stops at C, while a full SABCDEF ranking runs all the way down for a harsher S to F tier scale. However far the letters go, S is always the top of the S tier scale.
Each letter is shorthand for how good a pick is — the higher the letter, the better. S tier means the very best and F tier means the worst, with A, B, C and D filling the range in between, exactly as shown in the scale above. In practice you rarely memorise the definitions: you place items relative to each other, so your favourites drift up toward S and your least favourites sink toward D or F.
You will sometimes see the whole scale written out as a SABCDEF tier list — or called a tier sheet — which is the same idea, just spelling out every letter from S down to F. For a deeper breakdown of each rank, see tier list letters explained, and to colour them correctly check the tier list color codes.
Some lists add a rank above S. The S+ tier meaning is a “plus” step for the rare pick that stands out even among S-tier choices — so if you are asking what is higher than S tier, S+ (occasionally written SS or EX) is it. Most tier lists keep S as the ceiling, but S+ is there when you need it.
Past that the scale gets unofficial. SS and SSS turn up mostly in gacha and RPG communities, where a single pull can be so far ahead of the rest of the roster that even S+ undersells it. There is no agreed order once you go that high — one person's SSS is another's S+, so if you use them, label what they mean on the board itself.
The scale is just as flexible at the bottom. Plenty of lists stop at D instead of running to F, which makes the whole board feel less punishing, and others drop the letters entirely in favour of custom labels — "Goated", "Mid", "Never again". Renaming the rows is normal, not a mistake; the letters are a convention, not a rule.
Is S tier good or bad? S tier is good — the best there is. Is S tier better than A tier? Yes: S sits above A, which is exactly why S tier is the best rank on the board. In any S tier ranking, nothing outranks it unless a list adds S+.
It helps to see the gap between the ends of the scale. Knowing what is S tier and C tier — the S tier and C tier meaning side by side — makes placement obvious: S is elite, C is average, and the D tier meaning lands near the bottom. That spread from S tier, A tier, B tier on down is the whole point of ranking.
Not at all. S is a convention, not a requirement. Plenty of people rename tiers entirely — “Goated,” “Mid,” “Trash” — or use 1–5 stars. The letters are just a shared shorthand that most people understand instantly, which is why they stuck. In our tier list maker you can rename and recolor every tier in seconds.
Most tier lists fall apart for the same reason: the person making them changes the question halfway down the board. A few habits fix that.
Pick one axis and stick to it. Are you ranking by power, by quality, or by how much you personally enjoy the thing? Those are three different boards. A character can be the strongest pick in the game and still be the one you never want to play, and a film can be objectively better than the one you have rewatched nine times. Decide which question you are answering before the first tile moves, and say so when you post it.
Keep S rare. If a third of your items are in the top rank, S has stopped meaning anything — it is just where you put the things you like. S tier is supposed to be uncomfortable to fill. Two or three entries out of twenty is a healthy S row.
Let the middle be the middle. Most things really are B or C, and that is not an insult. People inflate the top of the board because ranking something average feels harsh, but a list where everything is A or S tells the reader nothing. The spread is the whole point.
And it is completely fine to leave a tier empty. If nothing in your list is genuinely worst-in-class, an empty F row is a more honest answer than dragging something down to fill it.
Decide what deserves the top spot — paste your list, drag your favorites to S, and export a clean image.
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Farasat is an engineer who designs websites and builds practical online tools in his spare time. He created Tier List Maker after using other ranking sites that asked for an account, stamped watermarks on downloads, or simply did not work well on a phone. He is not a professional gamer or a self-described tier-list expert — he builds and maintains this site himself, fixes issues, and adds features based on what visitors actually ask for.